


re-emerge, defeated, from the valley

by jouissant



Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:14:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24282679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: Tomorrow Brutus and Cassius will steal from Rome like thieves on Antony’s polite suggestion.
Relationships: Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Comments: 8
Kudos: 68





	re-emerge, defeated, from the valley

**Author's Note:**

> Set during s2 ep 1.

There is a niche in Brutus’s bedroom where he often sits to think. Once it must have housed an altar, and perhaps it’s blasphemous for him to wedge into it. Only there are nights—so many nights these last years—when Brutus cannot sleep, when he feels possessed by some fractious spirit, at war with himself, and will be soothed by nothing other than curling into the wall, knees to chest, and leaning his head against the cool, smooth plaster. These are the nights he writes bad poetry fit only for the kitchen fires, the words bursting forth like vomitus. But tonight he is too beset even for poetry.

Tomorrow Brutus and Cassius will steal from Rome like thieves on Antony’s polite suggestion. Brutus has spent hours directing their preparations with a cup of wine in hand, though a clear head would certainly have served him better. But lately Brutus cannot stand to be alone with his thoughts, which have grown so dangerous, so inebriant they are as wine themselves. He hoped tonight to obliterate them, but he has succeeded only in ending up here, tucked into this corner, his head a-swirl. 

Dreaming. 

We will be friends, he said to Antony. And Antony had proceeded as was perfectly normal: an embrace to seal the accord. A kiss on the cheek. _Oh, what friends they are, Mark Antony and Marcus Junius Brutus,_ the plebs might say. _I saw them kissing in the street._ What friends, indeed. Brutus cannot stop thinking about it.

In the street before Brutus’s house Antony took hold of him as though they had been reunited after a long parting. His arms had been as bands of metal. He had smelled like jasmine. Brutus was wan that day; since the Ides he feels as though he has bled himself to feed the republic, has gone about dizzy and in a cold sweat, yet Antony had kissed him without care, as though he did not notice. His lips were soft as petals, and he had left a wet stamp on Brutus’s cheek that Brutus did not move to wipe away. And then, as though in the next breath, he’d raised a yowling rabble to cast Brutus out of the city. 

Once, Brutus might have said he felt sorry for Antony; he said as much to Cassius days ago, when he made the case for letting Antony live by claiming him too insignificant to die. A childish mode of deception, and one that should embarrass Brutus to stoop to. But when it comes to Antony, Brutus often feels he has somehow reverted. He might be a youth again, grappling only with philosophy, his callow hands stained with ink and not with blood.

No, if Brutus has ever said he pities Antony, it has been an abject lie. Brutus has tried and tried to master the whims of his heart by subjugation. And here is Antony, so profligate with emotion, who moves through the world with a grace and calculation Brutus can only envy. He has never felt sorry for Antony in his life. If he could chalk up his current preoccupation to simple envy, or anger, or hatred, he might be able to get on with things, but the emotion that pulls at Brutus is none of these. Not solely, anyway.

He rouses himself from his stupor on the wall and calls out for a slave. The man appears instantly, as though materializing from the very air.

“Go to the house that was Pompey’s,” Brutus says. “See if Mark Antony is at home.”

“Any message, dominus?”

“No. Wait—yes.” Brutus coughs. “Tell him I wish to speak with him. Ask him to return here with you.”

The slave goes, and Brutus returns to his perch to wait.

When the slave returns some time later he is breathing hard. Brutus is gratified by his alacrity, but is less so when he speaks, shaking his head with regret.

“He is not at home, dominus.”

“Then where?”

“They did not know.”

“Not with Atia of the Julii?”

“They did not know, dominus.”

“Very well,” says Brutus, and sends him away, though he does not feel very well at all.

Diminished, he slouches back into the niche and sits with his chin in his hands. He feels like a beach from which the tide has receded, all manner of sea trash and soft-bellied animals left flopping in its wake. Antony is with Atia, and Brutus has finished his wine. He does not wish to raise his voice to call for another cup. He is resigned to sitting here, awaiting morning, when he will ride away with Cassius. Until then he will give himself leave to mope. 

This is why Brutus strives so for containment. Acknowledging a thing always makes it so much worse. If anyone knew his mind, Brutus thinks he’d expire. Feverish and heartsick as a maiden. He can hardly bear his own company.

Presently, Brutus hears a tapping on the roof-tiles outside the window. He ignores it. Yet it persists, growing in strength and volume. Something is clambering upon the roof. He begins to fear that if he looks at the window he will see some omen, some ill augury. To look upon such a thing, even to suspect it, will poison the journey ahead whether or not Brutus strictly believes its message. He fears a kind of self-fulfillment he will not be able to prevent. He shuts his eyes.

Is it an owl, he wonders, that harbinger of death? Oh, Gods, is it Caesar, come to haunt him? Brutus would deserve it. Caesar sent him away just like Antony, and since his death Brutus has indulged more than once a particular fantasy, one in which he swallows his righteous hurt at Caesar’s mistrust, goes away to Macedonia, abandons the republic. A trial by fire, it would have been, a hell, but would he have regretted it? Does he regret this? He asks himself the question a hundred times a day. He wishes for a year hence, for twenty. He will either be dead or he will have seen things set to rights.

“What are you doing sitting up there?” 

The voice is not Caesar’s. No ghost would speak so. Brutus starts. Antony stands at the window, leaning into Brutus’s bedroom. Brutus has not seen him since their meeting after the eulogies, and he looks considerably less formal now, ruddy with exertion and the bracing night air. 

Brutus fights the urge to put himself to rights. This is far from the worst state of affairs in which Antony has seen him. He has seen Brutus blood-drenched, tearful. He has mocked him to his face. He has held him close, kissed him as a friend--but Brutus cannot think of that. Antony climbs inside without waiting for an invitation. He leans against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest, surveying the room as though seeking something. An odd satisfaction passes over his face, as though he has found it. 

“Well,” he says. “Good evening.” 

Brutus should be meaner, but as it is he can only manage a question. “Are you in the habit of scaling walls?” 

“When it suits me.”

“And why does it suit you to scale mine now?” 

Antony shrugs. “Perhaps I wished to come and see you off.” 

“We’ll leave at first light. That is hours yet,” Brutus says. 

Antony pushes himself away from the window and comes to sit opposite Brutus in his niche, on the end of the bed. “Not you and Cassius,” he says, hacking up the name from somewhere in his throat. “Just you.” He rolls his neck and stretches his arms out. “You Junii have formidable walls, else I’m not as spry as I once was.” Antony has seen neither battlefield nor barracks in some time, but he looks no less fit to Brutus, well-muscled, limbs gleaming faintly with oil. He wears his customary short toga to excellent effect.

“There’s a perfectly adequate door.”

“Doors need men to open them. Men with eyes and mouths.”

There is something in his tone that sets Brutus’s hair on end. Antony is so very present in the room. All his earlier thoughts of sending for him and Brutus had not fully considered how it might be to have him here. 

“Gods, where is my hospitality,” he says. “Will you have water? Wine?”

Antony shakes his head. “Do not call for anyone.” 

He stands then, and it is only the work of a step before he is directly in front of Brutus, trapping him handily against the wall. Stupid, Brutus thinks. So stupid, so soused is he that he has missed this entirely, missed even the possibility until it is right in front of him. Oh, what a fool he is, to muse on ghosts and portents, only to be surprised by a perfectly standard assassin. 

Antony crowds him back against the wall, and Brutus can smell the cloying musk of his perfume. The air hangs heavy with jasmine. He has no weapon. He might manage a fight, or the honorable appearance of one. He might manage a shout before his throat is opened. 

He swallows. The sound seems to echo in the still room. There is a whisper of cloth as Antony raises his other hand. 

Brutus shuts his eyes. Time slows, and he marks its passing with acute awareness. He can feel the whole length of his neck, feel his unruly blood straining to meet the inevitable knife. They say the blade that killed Quintus Pompey was sharp as diamond. Brutus hopes it has been lately whetted. 

Ought he to be frightened? He isn’t. Instead, with his back against the wall, Brutus finds himself relieved. It makes sense, really. Easier to kill him than to send him off to Asia, where he might find any sort of trouble to harry Antony with. 

“I’m glad it’s you,” he blurts, at what he imagines is the very last moment. The words surprise him. They seem to come from somewhere deep inside, somewhere previously unknown, unlooked for.

“Hmm?”

“You’ll have sent another man for Cassius. Who was it? That red brute, Vorenus? No matter. I am glad to settle this between us, as it ought to be.”

“What are you talking about?” Antony frowns, holds up a hand as though to interject, but the words spill forth and will not be mopped up again. 

“I spoke the truth that day. I did not intend to have you killed. I forbade it. You had committed no capital offense. You loved him as I did, you—”

He is stayed by Antony’s calloused hand over his mouth.

“I have not come to kill you,” Antony says. He lowers his hand. There is a moment Brutus thinks to flee, but he is not quick enough. For Antony leans closer then, and kisses him.

His lips are soft as they were that day in the street, softer still for touching Brutus’s own. Their bodies are flush together, Antony’s bare thigh prodding between both of Brutus’s. His blood sings, and there is a moment, sweet and fleeting, in which Brutus purely enjoys himself. His lips part of their own volition and at this slight invitation Antony deepens the kiss, palming Brutus’s cheek and slipping his tongue into his mouth.

The intrusion sends twin shocks through Brutus, desire and dismay twisting in his belly. On some rote instinct he thrusts his hands between their bodies, shoves Antony backwards and away from him. Antony stumbles against the bed. He seems dazed, his eyes glassy, but he’s no less amused for it. That damned smirk he wears--Brutus despises it, that a man may look so easy in any circumstance.

“Was I wrong?” asks Antony, holding his arms out. “Are we not friends?”

Brutus wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “This is no overture of friendship.” 

“Oh, is it not? I shall have to reconsider my entire approach.”

“Leave me be, Antony. I’ve a journey to prepare for.”

“Yes, I can see how busy you are. Deep in your cups and sitting still as a piece of statuary.”

“I was contemplating how best to execute the role of grain monitor. I’ve been told it’s essential to the well-being of the republic.” 

Antony chuckles. He has moved closer again, or else Brutus spurned him too weakly to make any difference. “Dear Brutus. You’ll be a wonderful grain monitor.”

Brutus snorts. 

“Do you know what he always said about you?”

Brutus slides down from the niche.“I’ll guess. That--that I might be great, if only I would _try_.” There’s a strange pain to talking of Caesar with Antony, as though they share a deceased relation. 

“Yes,” says Antony softly. “Exactly that.”

For a moment his voice seems full of the same hurt Brutus feels. Antony tosses his head, and in that gesture casts the pain off like his cloak, which he sweeps from his shoulders to pile upon the floor. 

Again he reaches for Brutus. Brutus does not stop him, though he tenses in Antony’s arms, holds himself perfectly still as Antony kisses him again, chaste by decree of Brutus’s lips, which he presses tightly closed. Antony takes Brutus’s acquiescence for the consent it is, and draws him to the bed. Brutus wonders idly if he conducts all seductions so, or if he adjusts according to his subject. It must be the latter; Antony is nothing if not mutable. Constantly inconstant, Brutus thinks with no small measure of hysteria. Oh, what is he doing? But Brutus knows what he is doing. He is giving himself one more thing to regret.

The encounter ripples forth. Lamps are strategically extinguished, and the room begins to glow like honey. Brutus is divested of his tunic. His searching blood is everywhere, his idiot cock heavy with it, wanting nothing but touch, caring not from whom it comes but overjoyed somehow by Antony: Antony’s lips on his neck, Antony harassing Brutus with hands and tongue and teeth. 

“Sit astride me,” he says. “There we are.” 

Guiding hands, guiding voice, as though Brutus is some initiate. “Oh, do not be tender,” Brutus scoffs.

Antony has reached behind him with searching fingers, slick with some oil brought for the purpose of gentling Brutus. Well, he will not be gentled. He twines his fingers with Antony’s, greasing them in a mocking handclasp. Antony watches with hooded eyes as Brutus prepares himself roughly. Brutus glares back and sinks down on Antony in one motion. 

He pays for it, gasping and groping senselessly for Antony, who catches his hand again. “Easy.”

“I am,” snaps Brutus.

“As it suits you,” says Antony. He lies back, folds his arms behind his head and yawns.

For this Brutus wishes to ride him to collapse, only he cannot yet move. He is stuck here, burning, full of Antony, more open to him than he ever thought to be, and Antony will not stop _looking_ at him. It is interminable. He ought to end this, ought to cast Antony from the house entirely. But by the gods, he wants this. Bodies want to soften, to accommodate, and soon enough Brutus’s yields. He sighs, begins to roll his hips. Antony grins wide and takes his cue. 

He is a generous lover, Brutus will give him that. Antony watches him with interest, studies his face, tempers his movements. Antony’s own face is warm and open, pink with effort. Louche as Antony is, Brutus has never met a man so neat. Every inch attended to, every nail buffed to a sheen, the whole assembly suggesting carelessness, though there is none here at all. Or—perhaps he _is_ careless. Perhaps Antony, like a vine, has trained himself for so long and with such diligence he no longer knows he is doing it.

Brutus knows he is being seduced, but he allows himself to give over to it from moment to moment. Later he will blame the perfume, which rises from Antony’s heated skin to ensnare him. Later he will blame Antony in general. 

Brutus has to appreciate the irony. He, who will never love, who is unaccustomed to it, wearing affection like a mantle. Antony, indiscriminate, looking at Brutus as though he cares. Together they negate themselves. They make a void of pleasure to fall into.

Their breath comes quick and shallow. They grow wet with sweat. Brutus lands on Antony’s lap over and over, flesh meeting flesh in lewd claps. _More,_ he demands, and Antony clasps him about the waist and drives him harder, sits up on the bed and hauls Brutus against him.

A minute noise arises from the shadows: a slave, roused by their lust. Brutus ought not to be disturbed by his presence; a slave’s eyes are unseeing unless ordered otherwise. But he dislikes the intrusion, the idea that there will be a single extant soul besides himself and Antony to attest to what’s happening. His rhythm falters.

“Go,” he calls out raggedly.

“He’s nobody,” Antony groans. “Ignore him.”

“I—”

“Ignore him. Look at me.”

Antony takes hold of Brutus’s chin, sits up straighter so they are eye to eye. Brutus flinches and tries to jerk away, but Antony holds him fast, one hand on his face and the other at his hip. He fucks Brutus savagely, his gaze darting between Brutus’s face and the joining of their bodies, his jaw slack, brows raised as though impressed by what he sees in one or both places.

Between them Brutus’s cock bobs, forgotten; the way Antony drives into him Brutus might finish without remembering it at all, but Antony looks down and smiles. “Touch yourself,” he says, voice rough.

“No,” Brutus says, for no reason other than that it’s Antony who asked. 

Antony rolls his eyes. “I am inside you to the balls. When you sit your horse tomorrow—when you _shit_ tomorrow—you will think of me. Why deny yourself? Unless you wish to stand on principle. It’s warmed your bed every other night of your life.”

Brutus says nothing. Antony will read his silence as victory, but thus debased, thus overwhelmed, he can’t think of a retort. His head swims. Antony’s appreciative eyes on his cock have cursed him, and he wants desperately to touch himself. Antony is right, though; principle has long been Brutus’s bedfellow, and will be so until the day he dies. He grits his teeth. A droplet of sweat runs into his eyes and stings, but he does not blink. Brutus can still feel all the points of Antony’s fingers where he gripped his face. 

Antony considers him as though grappling with some decision. “Fine.” He spits into his hand in a long, glistening string. “I heard you wailing in the senate house,” he says conversationally. “I’ll hear you wail again tonight. It will be music to my ears.”

This fresh acid is reassuring, and Brutus finds an odd comfort in sneering back, in redoubling his efforts on Antony’s cock. Pleasure uncoils inside him, thick and heavy as a great snake. _See?_ he thinks. _I do not need you at all._

When Antony begins to touch him, the hot sphere of the room spins down to nothing. Antony’s pace slackens, then stills. This is not what Brutus wanted. He moans a protest, strikes the meat of Antony’s arm, commands Antony to fuck him. Antony ignores him in favor of continuing to study Brutus’s cock like he’s working out some problem. 

“You’ve been too long with Atia,” says Brutus, panting. “It works just like yours. Get on with it.”

Antony laughs, and Brutus shocks himself by doing the same, dissolving into a shaking fit that jostles Antony inside of him and makes them both cry out. Antony pulls him closer and kisses him open-mouthed. Brutus lets him. For a moment they are lovers, and Brutus has forgotten everything.

He lets himself wilt forward and rest his forehead on Antony’s shoulder. Antony’s breath is humid on his neck, and Brutus can feel the same tingling consciousness along his nerves as when he thought himself about to die. His body seems to know the offering it makes, and maybe he is not so far from death after all. His earlier anger coalesces, melts slow as sap into the bowl of his hips. 

In such closeness, detail: the high noises Antony makes, the faint whistling when he breathes. Brutus has always distrusted the foul wildness of bodies, but he is drawn to Antony’s now; he licks at his sweat, presses his nose into the thatch of hair beneath his arm. He groans. His joints creak, muscles protest. Release is a darting eel, slipping away from him. 

“Let go,” murmurs Antony in terse encouragement. “Damn you, let go.”

Brutus grinds against him like a pestle and shouts against his chest, and when he comes Antony kisses him again. Not on his mouth, which is drawn in a rictus, but on his cheek, where he sucks hard enough to bruise. 

In the blankness after Brutus is subdued, and allows himself to be tended. “There are slaves for this,” he says, as Antony rubs him all over with a cloth as though Brutus were a war horse. 

“Now you want a slave.” 

A slave would lend decorum, diffuse intimacy. Of course he wants a slave. “Perhaps you’ve reconsidered killing me.” 

“After that performance? How could I rob myself of the chance to do that again?” 

He leans to kiss Brutus, who rolls deftly away, sits up and pulls his wadded toga into his lap. “You already have,” he says. “Today I flee Rome with your dogs at my heels.” 

Antony flinches. Brutus has not handled many knives, but he’s adept at metaphoric wiggling. This is not a story in which Antony asks him to stay, but perhaps he will not sit so easy with his leaving. 

“You’re not fleeing.” 

“Aren’t I? Then I shall have to reconsider my whole approach.” 

Antony sits beside him on the bed. He takes the toga from Brutus and begins to fold it. There is a plainness to the gesture that wounds Brutus. In it he fancies he can see something unimaginable: Antony in repose beside him, freed from their incessant need to move about the board together. 

Antony waves his hand. “You’re—taking your leave. And anyway, in all of this,” Antony says, “you have never once fled.” 

“I--” 

“And do not say, ‘when I left with Pompey’. Old Cato fled to a rathole after that. You could never have borne it.” 

Cato also ran himself through, but Brutus leaves this aside. He hums. “I came back to him.” 

“Yes.” 

“It was all right for awhile.” 

They sit in silence for a time. Antony hands back the folded toga. “Nearly dawn,” he says. He yawns again and stands up from the bed. “I’m never awake so bloody early. Maybe I will see you both off after all.” 

He stretches long as a cat, eyes shut, arms reaching for the ceiling. He is glorious in his nudity, and just the once, just because he will never have this again, Brutus allows himself to look until Antony opens his eyes. 

His gaze drops to his lapful of linen. “You can’t,” he says. “Cassius will be insufferable. To say nothing of my mother.” 

“Cassius will be insufferable anyway. Your mother would be justified. Up with you,” he says, offering his hand. 

Brutus takes it, and is pulled once more into Antony’s arms. He can still smell jasmine. Were he not leaving he would forbid the slaves from laundering his sheets, would hoard them until the scent faded. Gods, is this how Antony leaves all those he beds, so racked with sentiment? It’s enough to give Brutus a headache. 

His cheek throbs, and he runs his fingers over the blooming ache. When he goes down to meet Cassius and the rest of their party Servilia will fret over it and Brutus will duck away, but he will find himself touching it in idle moments, and will be sorry when the soreness fades. 

“Go away from here,” says Antony. “And then come back.”


End file.
